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Monthly Archives: December 2012

The best thing about introductions are the questions you get back in return – after all, the surgical safety crisis is going to improve through dialogue, not monologue! – and when they have a question, the readership of the British Medical Journal is certainly not afraid to ask.

During last year’s appeal for Lifebox, we got some really important ones.

“Is a $250/£160 pulse oximeter really necessary when you can buy cheaper online?”

“Can you prove the impact of pulse oximetry in the operating theatre?”

Yes and yes and yes, with a conviction that isn’t just a case of high mission-fever; the rationale behind our answers is fundamental to the development of Lifebox, and we were glad to be able to discuss it further in the BMJ this week.

The interview is in the journal this week, with an extended version online. You can also catch a podcast of Atul in conversation for that authentic dialogue experience!

So there’s the scholarship, the methodology, the high-level view. But it’s not a different conversation in the field. They’re saying exactly the same from the front line – only the cases are personal, and the stories are heart-breaking.

“Can I ask your advice doctor?” Tom Bashford, a volunteer anaesthetist working at a hospital in Ethiopia recalls being asked, on his 10-month VSO placement. “The recovery nurse who I had been teaching looked puzzled. “I have been asked by some of my colleagues on the wards how to wake up patients who have not recovered from their anaesthetic after one or two days. What do you suggest?”

Dr Tom Bashford at Yekatit 12 Hospital(c) VSO/Ben Langdon

“My heart sank; all of the drugs we were using for anaesthesia should have cleared within hours, and a patient who was still asleep after two days was more likely to have suffered some other untoward event. After a few months of working in Ethiopia, I had a near certain guess as to the cause.”

Click over to the BMJ blog for the rest of the piece – it’s a conversation no healthcare worker should have to have, and no patient, or family; but it’s part of the reality of unsafe surgery in low-resource settings. It shouldn’t be, and we’re working to change things. Together, we can make a difference. Let’s talk.

If you’ve seen our excitement on Facebook or watched us struggle to contain our characters on Twitter, you’ll know that we’ve got some big news to share.

Our colleagues in Papua New Guinea have heard the news.

The British Medical Journal, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the U.K., has – well – we’ll let them tell you:

“Christmas is coming and this week we launch the BMJ’s Christmas appeal,” explained editor Fiona Godlee in her recent editorial.

“After last year’s success, when BMJ readers gave over £33, 632 to buy 210 pulse oximeters for use in 10 low resource countries, we are supporting the Lifebox Foundation again.”

Well!

We’re excited to have a second introduction to the BMJ readership, and thrilled at the opportunity to update those readers whose generosity allowed us to do so much more over the last 12 months.

And so we interrupt your regularly scheduled Lifebox broadcast for a foreign holiday of sorts: feature articles, blog posts and Q&As hosted on the BMJ website. We’ll introduce you to colleagues worldwide whose work on the frontline of the surgical safety crisis has been supported by BMJ readers, and to the educators, donors and hands down champions we are working with to make surgery safer.

Click on over with us to read more about how Lifebox is working to support the rebuilding of surgical capacity in Rwanda following the genocide, what it feels like to be a house officer at a hospital in Tanzania, and how your support is helping to take away the terrible, answerless questions faced by anaesthesia providers in Ethiopia.

BMJ oximeters were part of a large shipment we sent to Togo last month, and the pictures from the workshop came back just this week. 113 monitors were distributed and 179 anaesthesia providers were trained by the Association National des Techniciens en Anesthesie du Togo (ANTART). Look at what you helped to make happen! And imagine how much more we can do.